


The Switch-Up

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Original Work
Genre: Amoral Characters, Crack, Gen, Swords & Sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-06 04:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21220355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: He'd hired an adventurer to take care of a little problem.  Well, a big problem, with too many eyes and teeth and tentacles.  And he also planned to kill the adventurer, so he didn't have to pay her.  Of course the best laid plans often go awry, and his plans were anything but the best.





	The Switch-Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).

The knock sounded on Ezekiel’s door, loud and echoing. Grumbling, he got to his feet and was surprised to see her standing there, wide-eyed. He’d hired a barbarian sellsword to get rid of a little pest, and he was surprised she was back so soon. Or at all, actually. “Come in, my dear, come in.”

She moved like a badly-puppeteered marionette, with a stiff, awkward gait, something unlike the easy, predatory grace at which she slunk in at their first meeting. Now, she seemed barely capable of besting a chair. As she sat, she attempted to lean back and failed, falling backward. Sighing, Ezekiel asked. “Can I help you?”

The barbarian stared at him for a long, long time, looking up at him from where she had fallen.

“Greetings, my fellow human.” The adventurer said, jaw hanging slack after that last line. He was about to ask her what was going after a long pause when she started again. “I do believe that you had asked me to kill Sargbok the Despoiler, yes?”

Oh great, _she named the abomination_. You _never_ named the abomination. One drunken night of sorcery, and now some eldritch monstrosity was roaming the land devouring livestock and small children. How was he supposed to perform alchemy without the bones of small children? Fuck it, if she made the thing a pet he’d still pay her so long as she’d get it away from his tower. He nodded.

“And you gave the human form in front of you a talisman to defeat Sargbok the Despoiler.”

“Did you get hit on the head?” He studied her closely, weighing her demeanor. He didn’t actually expect her back here—there may have been a little thing or two he hadn’t mentioned. Like the fact that the talisman was supposed to explode. He’d be rid of his mistake, and wouldn’t have to pay the adventurer either.

“Did you give this pink thing with all of the annoying rigid skeletal structure a talisman to defeat Sargbok the Despoiler?” Came the answer. The expression remained blank, no hint of annoyance, but he felt some sort of urgency in those words.

He carefully appraised her. 

“Did you give this pink think with a disturbingly small amount of tentacles… er… I believe the term is 'arms'... a talisman?” The barbarian asked again, standing up. “And was that talisman meant to exchange this inferior, bilaterally symmetrical body with that of Sargbok the Despoiler.”

“No, it was meant to explode and kill you.” He was up and at his spellbook again, looking it over. He perused and oh… he put the emphasis on the wrong syllable during the chants. Once. Or twice. Or... backwards Latin was _hard_.

“Ah. Understood.” The barbarian said, getting to her feet and shambling to the door. Opening it wide, she said “The summoner said the talisman was supposed to kill you. I am unaware of why he would do that if he wanted you to kill Sargbok er… me... or you... us?”

“It was meant to kill you both, actually.” Ezekiel said, growing annoyed. The swordswoman was clearly no threat. She wasn't carrying her sword--perhaps she had lost it alongside her wits. Perhaps the talisman had killed the abomination and debris hit her in the head and rendered her? Hm... perhaps he could use her as components for a spell? Interesting, although losing that sword was a shame--was magical.

“Oh, the summoner-thing said he wanted to kill me too. I think we should…”

“Who the Hell are you even talking to, woman?”

“The summoner-thing wishes to speak with you now.”

The door _erupted_ off it’s hinges a bulky, primordial terror poured into the room, eyes and feelers and teeth and teeth. Corrupted flesh arranged in non-Euclidean patterns upon patters, quavered and undulated as that stupid mistake of his rolled in, smashing the table in the process. Before Ezekiel could say a word—less likely a spell and more just ‘oh shit’—something coiled around him and lifted him aloft.

A maw opened. One of it's pseudopods held the large sword the Barbarian had carried.

Between the _wet _sounds of meat sliding against meet and tooth, a curious piping exited the thing’s gullet. The barbarian woman stepped closer, straightened herself, and said.

“The stabbing-woman in my form is expressing, using my superior vocal architecture, that she would like this pathetic meatform back. Likewise, I would appreciate being placed in my body.” The Barbarian said, voice flat. After some more dischordant piping, the barbarian added deadpan. “Also, the stabbing woman is saying disparaging remarks about my perfect body in comparison to her pathetic meatform.”

The piping ceased.

"Did he actually not realize this?" The sword asked. Smug magical talking sword, acting all superior. "You're actually surprised that your spell swapped their bodies?" 

“The charm was supposed to kill you both!” Ezekiel cried out. He could’ve tried giving the charm to a chicken, or maybe an orphan, and letting it blow up when the abomination at them, but he didn’t want to have to buy a chicken and not sacrifice it to his dark gods, and the orphanage had been cracking down on wizards stealing their supply. “I don’t know how this happened, and I don’t know how to replicate it.”

Sargbok-in-the-Barbarian turned to the Barbarian-in-Sargbok, looking eye-to-eye… to-eye-to-eye-to-eye, then turned and said. “You had best try. I have children and livestock to devour. And this meat-form’s jaw cannot open sufficiently wide enough to accommodate children or livestock.”

The sword said, apparently to the monstrosity, "This is why I insisted you still carry me. Because that thing in your body is even dumber then you."

The piping was at a pitch that hurt Ezekiel’s ears. 

“Yes. The body swap and my attempts to and livestock did distress the meat-form hijacking my body.” A hand patted the putrescent flesh of the daemoniac horror. “I do apologize for you. It must be so hard to devour children.”

The blob was silent. The sword sighed.

“I don’t think she does that.” Ezekiel muttered, and a few of the countless eyes dotting the abominations surface changed color, from green to blue.

“That is weird.” Sargbok-in-The-Barbarian said. “Now please start chanting already.”

The maw widened

* * *

She woke up on the floor, rubbing her head and groaning. Pulling her hand back, she saw five fingers. Five human fingers. Not a multitude of spasmodically writhing tentacles. That was a good sign. Blinking a little to clear her vision, she smiled, recognizing that little scar she’d gotten at age five, playing with her father's axe.

The wizard hadn’t even fucked up giving her _her _body back.

“Sargbok?” The wizard said, poking her with his foot. “I’m fairly sure the spell didn’t work, but since you’ve been incapacitated and how uncoordinated you are that body, I challenge you to…”

That was as far as he got as she sprung up and decked him in the face. Punching felt good again. No floppy-limbed thrashing, just knuckles-on-face. No squirming up a hill on pseudopods, just standing on two legs and walking.

She didn’t _hear _colors anymore either. That was good.

"Thank the gods." Her sword whined. "You can't believe how awkward it was when you were the blob monster. The slime felt weird."

Things were going well so far. So the wizard always intended a double cross, hm. She perused the chamber in this tower, looking for the most valuable thing she could hock. Spellbook? Statuette of a blasphemous entity? Fuck it, the wizard probably was enough of an asshole the townsfolk would pay her to hand him over. Decisions, decisions. The sound of a flutist being hit by a Warhammer assaulted her ears, and she turned. “Oh, you’re back to where you were?”

More out of tune screeching. From what little she managed to pick up, he was saying something about meat-forms and farewell and whatever the fuck. She waved it off, and watched him watch her as it squeezed through the door to the wizard’s tower. Yep, she was back to normal, and so was Sargbok the Despoiler, looking forwards to a night of eating children. Smiling she muttered under her breath “Dream big, ya gooey dolt.”

Wait a minute.

"You know he's probably off to go eat some children, right?" Her sword asked. 

Oh fuck.

Thirty seconds later, she was racing down the hill, sword in hand. 

Half a day later, she was trudging back up the hill, coated in something she was _pretty sure_passed for that thing’s blood. Okay, one horrifying monster dealt with, now just to ransack the wizard’s tower and…

…it was gone. Every last brick. Nothing left but a giant scorchmark. Maybe he teleported it all away. More likely, she imagined he tried that and blew himself up. Along with all the loot. She sighed. At least no more orphans would get eaten. Except by the direwolves. And vampires. And the orphanage's headmaster--why did the village put a giant malevolent spider in charge of the orphanage, anyway? Whatever, the orphans being devoured metric was going down dramatically... somewhat. That was cause to celebrate.

Even if she wasn’t getting paid.

She and her sword said in unison "This day _sucked_."

**Author's Note:**

> There is no excuse for this.


End file.
